and I am your lover, smitten
by steve.a
Summary: They don't talk about it—they certainly don't have rules—but if they did, this would probably not be allowed. Peebee and Ryder are not going to be Those People who wake up next to each other with dreamy smiles and bleary eyes. It keeps happening anyway. (Or: The first time Peebee wakes up next to Ryder—and the next, and the next. And so it goes.)


**Notes:** Spoilers for Peebee's entire arc and loyalty mission. Some allusions to Ryder Family Secrets storyline.

 **AND I AM YOUR LOVER, SMITTEN**

steve.a

* * *

 _An inevitability._ That was how Peebee categorized Sara Ryder, from the moment she tackled her to the ground on Eos and, rather than yelling or shoving her off, the idiot human smirked up at her, eyes bright and bemused and delighted, and _wow_ , Peebee couldn't help but think, _she's buff._ Hot.

Distracting. There were Remnant to shoot, to study, to chase. Ruins to uncover, a planet to save, frontiers to explore, blah blah blah, so on and so forth. The solid, smirking presence of the human Pathfinder—that could be pursued on another day. But it _would_ be pursued.

An inevitability.

Peebee had crammed a lot of life in her meagre century and change. And—yes, that involved a lot of smooching, a lot of sex, a lot of other moderately fun stuff that stupid aliens made a ridiculously big deal out of. Liam called her a _user_ once but Peebee thought of dark eyes and a sneering "babe" and—no. No. Peebee knew what it was like to _be_ used, and she wasn't like that, would never be.

So she laid out everything—no relationship, no expectations, just fun, blowing off steam—when she took Ryder into that escape pod that first time, that first inevitability.

Ryder fixed her with that intent Pathfinder look, intense, focused, but then—so trusting and gentle and earnest, repeating, agreeing, her grin still held in the curve of Peebee's palm, "No strings. Right."

Then they put their clothes back on and went on with their business like the mature adults they had to be. No cuddly sentiment, no pillow talk, hell, no _pillows_.

They'd meet hard and fast and breathless in storage closets, the escape pod (duh), the drive core once when Gil was in a poker game, every nook and cranny of the ship that Ryder only knew about because Kallo forwarded her the Tempest blueprints. An unspoken rule: Ryder's bedroom was off-limits. That way madness lay, as well as soft bedding and probable mood music and also that creepy pet hamster who definitely watched Ryder sleep.

It was bad enough Peebee had essentially moved into the Tempest, cardboard boxes and everything. She didn't need to add even more domestic crap like finding out what Ryder looked like with traces of sleep still in her eyes, or whether the esteemed Pathfinder was the kind of person who would try to kiss you with morning breath.

Two weeks after their first hook-up, Peebee woke up next to her for the first time, despite everything.

It wasn't even after sex.

They had been chasing monoliths and loose ends around the Kadara slums for so long that by the time Ryder was ready to call it a day, everything was dark. Quiet in a not-super-creepy way Peebee never expected Kadara could be.

Liam squinted up at the night-ish sky. "Could call the Tempest for a direct pick-up," he suggested. Hopeful, exhausted, yearning for his special couch probably. "Save us a trip through Murdertown Port."

Ryder shook her head. "Let's just take the tram. I need to check up on something with Sloane anyway." A flicker of a grin. "With luck, maybe I'll even get to disturb her beauty sleep."

Liam snorted. "You enjoy pissing off that lady way too much."

"I can hear the headlines now," Peebee sighed. "'Human Pathfinder, tragically shanked in Kadara Port. May her memory continue to irritate psychotic gang leaders.'"

An hour later Peebee startled awake with a crick in her neck and, okay, just a bit of drool on her chin. Still, she didn't dare move a muscle. She felt warm and surprisingly comfortable, and tired in a to-the-bone way. The deep, familiar thrum of the tram indicated they hadn't even arrived at the port yet, so maybe she could doze for just a while longer—

"Naw, I'll let them sleep," said an annoying voice with an annoying British accent. "They're adorable, look."

A soft _click_ and Peebee's eyes shot open.

 _Oh, fuck._

She scrambled into an upright sitting position, which sent Ryder tumbling sideways since she had apparently been comfortably snoozing with her face tucked between Peebee's head and right shoulder. Well, that explained the crick in her neck. Ryder's nose twitched from the rough displacement but, amazingly, she didn't wake.

Peebee rubbed her achey neck and glared. "What the hell, Kosta?"

The guilty party raised his arms in surrender, smartly switching off his omni-tool. A smug grin ruined all his other attempts at appearing apologetic. "Sorry. Didn't mean to wake you from your very comfortable slumber."

"Ugh! Shove off." It'd been a long day. They were all tired. Transit had a way of putting people to sleep. Whatever. "And hand it over—I heard you snap a photo. Total creeper move by the way. Massive invasion of privacy. Etcetera."

Liam shrugged, shameless. "Too late. I already forwarded it to Suvi."

"Sorry, Peebee," came Suvi's voice over the comm-link, because apparently this was a group chat now. "Liam hyped it up as adorable. And it is!" She giggled.

"Do you want a copy too?" Liam asked.

"No! Delete. Now."

Peebee's omni-tool beeped anyway, indicating an incoming photo message. Ugh! This was why she didn't people.

At her glare, Liam finally relented. "Okay, I'm done, I promise! Going forward, this precious moment in time stays between you, me, and Suvi." He nodded at Ryder, who had begun snoring very softly. "I would include the Pathfinder too but that girl dozes like the dead. It's impressive."

Peebee surveyed the disaster of a human taking up all the seat space beside her. Limbs sprawled out every which way, head lolled to the side (in danger of hanging off the seat) and mouth slack: this was their illustrious leader.

"What a mess," she said, meaning it as a jibe. Instead it came out sort of soft, fond. Shit.

To her acute and begrudging gratitude, for once in his life Liam made no comment.

* * *

Even as they grew closer as actual friends, a fact which disturbed Peebee to no end—stupid human, too sweet and attractive for her own good—they didn't stop their whatever-it-was that had begun with post-meltdown zero-G shenanigans, cardboard boxes from her old Nexus apartment scattered about and Kalinda's latest jibe freshly burrowed under her skin.

Stress relief, they called it, trading impish grins like they were two horny college students. They were more or less the right age for it, Peebee realized once, tinkering with RemTech in the small hours of the night. Or maybe it wasn't night—it was really hard to tell on a spaceship—but the point was most of the crew was asleep or spirited away in their quarters, and everything was quiet for once. No comm-link banter or arguments erupting in the research room, just the soft hum of the ship's engine and, in Peebee's quarters at least, the periodic, comforting little beep-beep's of Poc. Even Kallo and Suvi had left their seemingly constant vigil on the bridge, which meant the Tempest's fate rested in SAM's very capable (if not literal) hands.

In any case, it was in this feels-like-night-time silence where Peebee's thoughts were a little slower, a little less manic than normal. These moments always offered the perfect window for Peebee to put down her endless brainstorming and hypotheticals and inventing, and sit down and face the quieter sides of her work like research, study, maintenance. Or—in the case of this particular night—repair.

Ryder had turned in Zap after the previous mission, sheepish. "She kind of went haywire in a fight with some kett," Ryder explained. "Might be—uh, might be because I missed a shot with my sniper and hit her instead? Hit something important?"

"Oh, my poor bot," said Peebee with mock tragedy, clutching her heart. "Go away for a while and I'll fix her up. You monster."

Ryder grinned, the bounce immediately back in her step. "What would I do without you?"

"Without me, you wouldn't even have a bot to mutilate in the first place, dummy."

"Yeah, yeah. Thanks, okay?" She darted forward and pressed a quick, chaste kiss to Peebee's cheek before she could react. "Let me know when she's fit for action!"

Then Ryder had dashed off without another word, sliding down the ladder to her own quarters. Looking back, it was kind of funny, cute, even—the Pathfinder's hasty, blushing retreat. Peebee recalled the moment as she leaned over the damaged parts of the Remnant VI, and suddenly it was easy to remember that Pathfinder Ryder was really quite young.

"Twenty-two, twenty-three?" she muttered to herself. "Gee, what is that in asari years?" She sighed and reached for a smaller screwdriver, shooting Zap a mournful look. "No wonder you're in such a sorry state. You're being deployed by a _kid_."

But she was one to talk. She hated that word. "Kid." She'd heard it a lot at the universities, her crappy research jobs back home, Kalinda's high-brow parties. It wasn't the insinuation about her age that pissed her off—being young just meant she had a lot of years ahead to accomplish things—but the word was never meant kindly. It was always laced with condescension, implication, a thinly veiled dose of envy. It wasn't Peebee's fault she was smarter than those hags four times her age. Wasn't her fault the kind of exploration she thirsted for in her Maiden years necessitated barging into the stuffy, ugly world of academia. _Whatever._

It was okay when Drack used the word—that crazy old krogan had earned the right to call just about anyone a kid, probably. But this, this tinkering in the dark when it felt like the whole ship was asleep, with the memory of Ryder's weird little hours-ago kiss still burning on her cheek—it oddly reminded her how young the both of them were. Like yeah, they could totally pass as just two horny college kids.

"Nah," Peebee muttered again. (Talking to yourself, always a great sign, that.) "We've seen too much shit."

"Who? You and Zap?" came a voice by the door, startling the crap out of her.

"Agh!" Peebee whirled around, already knowing who the person leaning lazily against her doorframe would be. She could always hear the smirk in her voice, the same smirk from that distant first meeting on Eos. "Hey. Maybe don't sneak up on your various heavily armed ship-mates at—whatever hour it is of Tempest's fake-night."

"Time is a human construct," Ryder said lightly. Then she frowned. "Or—hm—a sentient construct? You know what I mean."

"A social construct," said Peebee. "But one we've all managed to build from the astronomy of our respective solar systems, light years away from each other. I wouldn't discount it entirely."

"Thought you were all about anti-establishmentarianism."

"Shit, you're right. Quick, let's jettison all the clocks before Cora wakes up."

"Vive la revolution," drawled Ryder. "Unfortunately SAM can tell you the time on command, and he's kind of stuck with me. Do I get spaced too?"

"Effecting change is tough, Ryder. We all have to make sacrifices."

Ryder laughed, and pushed herself off the doorframe. She took a step inside Peebee's workspace, which, duh, she did all the time to talk to her, but it felt different somehow in this feels-like-night-time quiet of the ship. Intimate.

"Time might not really be a thing here," said Ryder, soft. "But I keep track of my team and you're usually napping around now. You're not up because of what I did to Zap, are you?"

Peebee was never one to skirt the truth, guilty puppy-dog eyes or no. "I am absolutely up because of what you did to Zap."

"Oh. Sorry."

 _Damn guilty puppy-dog eyes._ "I wasn't tired anyway," she relented. "Is your ego so big you think I'd take away from _my_ well-earned beauty naps just to do errands for _you_ , Miss Ryder?"

She punctuated this with a light poke to Ryder's shoulder. Ryder's grin returned, as easily as switching on a lightbulb. "My ego is that big, in fact. I've been told I'm a very confident individual."

Peebee laughed. "Cocky, maybe."

"That, too. Don't tell Lexi. She doesn't need to add another adjective to my psych report."

"Yes, because Lexi and I have been known to throw tea parties and trade chitchat on the regular."

Ryder smirked. "Believe me, Lexi would be delighted by that."

"Yeah, she'd probably start jotting down notes on the napkins about what a nut-case I am," she said, breezy, unable to stop the smile tugging at her lips despite herself. "Speaking of nut-cases... You always awake at this hour or did you come just to check up on me?"

That sounded a little more accusatory than Peebee intended, but maybe it was just in her head since she was still mentally a bit freaked out about the whole kiss-on-the-cheek thing. In any case, Ryder didn't seem to notice.

"I was sleeping," Ryder said, nonchalant. "Then I wasn't. Bad dreams. They happen."

"Do... yoooooouu... wanna talk?"

Ryder burst into giggles, then. "Oh my God, Peebee! Sounded like you were pulling teeth."

Peebee grimaced. "Felt like it, too. Okay, buster. This is a once-in-a-lifetime offer and it gets rescinded in three... two..."

"Wait." Ryder touched Peebee's wrist, like she could physically stop her from taking back something verbal and incorporeal. Weirdo. "Can I save this offer? Cash it in at a later date?"

Peebee considered this for a moment. "Fine. But I'll warn you, its value depreciates at a rate of 1% on a declining-balance."

"Per annum?"

"Per _diem_."

"Stingy." Ryder frowned, taking this very seriously. "Fine. But I want to know its initial value. Is it, like, one hour of listening to me ramble about my big bad nightmares or...?"

"That's a mystery, Ryder. A mystery voucher."

"Lame."

"Take it or leave it!"

"I'm taking it," she said, immediate. "I don't want to mull over crappy head stuff tonight, Peebee. But I could use an ear next time, maybe."

"Fair enough. Just remember you invited math into this, Pathfinder." She hummed and turned back to her tools and the dismantled parts of Zap spread out across her desk, but she found it much more difficult to concentrate now.

"Zap going to be okay?" Ryder asked, still there, apparently nothing better to do.

"With me around? Of course." Peebee turned again to lightly prod Ryder with the tip of her screwdriver. "I'm just trying to upgrade her backup self-regenerating function so a bozo like you won't have such an easy time messing her up again."

Ryder crammed her hands in her pockets in an act of contrition, but her shameless, sunny grin gave herself away. "I'll have you know it's not _easy_ to screw up the way I do—it takes a lot of effort to trigger specific series of unfortunate events."

"Very reassuring." Peebee dropped her tools on the table, then, resulting in a louder clang than desired. She turned to face Ryder fully, grabbing her sleeve. "Hey, you don't want to talk about whatever, I get it. So you need some stress relief? We could get busy, you can go back to bed. Bada boom, happily ever after."

Ryder blinked at her, clearly a little startled. On the rare ( _very_ rare) instances Ryder wasn't in the mood, she would just grin at Peebee, say something teasing like, "You're insatiable," and they'd move on, but tonight she just looked at her with those wide, bright eyes and sighed. "No. I... don't think that's what I want today, Peebee."

A nasty part of Peebee wanted to shoot back, _Then why are you here?_ They chatted, joked, it was fun. Now was usually around the time Ryder would either make a pass or saunter off to do the rest of her rounds, go chill with Cora and Vetra in the cargo bay or trade gossip with Liam and Jaal on his ugly old couch. Were they asleep? Was that it? Peebee knew for a fact from when she snuck out for a drink an hour ago that Drack was awake and rummaging around the galley, putting together a pot roast. _Go talk to him,_ Peebee wanted to say. _The only thing I can offer that he won't is sex, and well, pot roast is a decent substitute for that anyway. What is it you want from_ me?

But that nasty, ugly part of her was not going to touch Ryder if Peebee had anything to say about it. "My feelings for you were so intense, I got scared," Kalinda used to say. "I just lashed out, babe." And Peebee would always believe her, forgive her, because well, maybe Peebee deserved to deal with crap like that, but Ryder sure didn't. Ryder could be strange and opaque and difficult, but still—Ryder was good. Fundamentally. Peebee wasn't going to be the jerk to fuck that up. Hell to the no.

All this was processed in Peebee's head in the span of a second. Oops. So much for thoughts slowing down at night.

"Don't sweat it, Ryder," she said evenly. "I need to finish Zap's upgrades anyway—"

"Um, actually," Ryder said, touching her shoulder to stop her from turning back to her work, "is it okay if I stick around a while longer? Or—I was gonna just sit on the couch in the meeting room. It's comfy but not soft enough that I'll doze off. Maybe you could bring Zap and your tools and stuff, keep me company?"

Just sitting together? No sex or banter? Peebee should have said no, said something like, "Go ask Jaal instead." After all, Ryder was good but Peebee knew better than anyone how good could go bad—especially, it seemed, when Pelessaria B'Sayle was involved. They had fun together, but if Ryder was going to keep pulling shit like this, or kisses on the cheek—it was probably best to start distancing herself. Now.

Just in case, right?

Ryder withdrew her hand from Peebee's shoulder, shoved it back in her pocket, like she knew exactly what Peebee was thinking. Somehow that action broke Peebee's brain because the next thing she said was—

"All right, nerd. Just—let me get my stuff together, okay?"

Ryder grinned and it was like the sun rising. _Oh boy._ This was gonna be a long night.

In the end, Peebee didn't get a lot of work done on Zap because Ryder had _lied_ and the sofa in the comm room was entirely comfortable enough to fall asleep on, as one human Pathfinder and one Remnant researcher could now attest to. What felt like hours later, Peebee awoke to laughter erupting from below in the research room, shouts about something to do with Liam and Jaal and arm-wrestling. The Tempest usual.

Consciousness, awareness of her surroundings, came to Peebee in choppy bursts. Her neck hurt (again) probably from the way her head was crammed against the sofa's armrest. The rest of her body felt stiff but otherwise fine, sprawled across the length of the couch. All of her was kind of cold, except for her legs. Her legs were warm.

Her eyes fluttered open, and she managed to lift her head incrementally to glare at the opposite end of the couch. Of course. There was Ryder. There were her legs curled up in Ryder's lap, Ryder's arms resting in turn on Peebee's calves.

Ryder herself was awake, too, this time. She smirked at Peebee, eyes unfairly bright for someone who likely also just woke up. "Morning, Peebs," she murmured. "Thought you said you weren't tired."

"Maybe I got tired from hauling that poor bot and my repair kit all the way up here," Peebee said. She should probably move now, get up and pick Zap's parts off the floor before Liam or Drack came thundering up looking for them. She winced at the thought of Drack stepping on her VI daughter. Zap had already been through so much.

But the sofa really was quite comfortable, and Ryder was tracing light, little patterns on Peebee's calves, and ugh, she kind of felt on the verge of falling asleep again. Maybe she'd had too many late non-nights.

Peebee let her head droop back against the armrest. "Ryder?" she yawned into the fabric of the sofa. "Did you sleep?"

"Yeah," she said, "I slept."

"Was it... a good sleep?" She was fishing now, they both knew it. But hadn't Ryder come up here for the express purpose of not wanting to plunge back into dream-land?

"Well," said Ryder, still idly tracing her fingers around Peebee's legs. Peebee wondered if she was drawing something, or writing something, but trying to concentrate on deciphering potential patterns felt impossibly complex at the moment. "My neck hurts like hell, and I definitely cramped my shoulders or something. I drooled on my favourite jacket." She gave Peebee's knee a quick, gentle squeeze. "But... It was a really good sleep."

Peebee smiled, sighed. "Nice. I'm glad."

They stayed like that a few minutes longer, Ryder's weight on Peebee's legs, her legs in Ryder's lap, the steady sound of Ryder's breathing punctuated by the voices of their teammates downstairs. It was nice. Serene, almost.

"Ryder," she whispered. "What are we doing?"

She felt Ryder's hands freeze, then remove themselves entirely from Peebee's legs. A heavy sigh.

"I don't want to move," Ryder admitted softly. "I'm 90% sure my legs fell asleep and I'm kind of terrified."

Peebee snorted a laugh, finally shaking off the last lingering shreds of sleep. She swung her legs off the couch and jumped to her feet, the movement making Ryder flinch.

"C'mon, Ryder. You're a survivalist! Embrace the tingle!"

She tried to drag Ryder to her feet, which only made Ryder yelp shrilly and flop off the couch and hit the ground. She spent the next minute clutching her thighs and yelling, "The pain. THE PAIN," which of course caused Lexi and Cora to come running, while Peebee laughed and laughed, those weird quiet moments buried and forgotten.

* * *

The next few times Peebee woke up next to Ryder were in the Nomad, shockingly enough.

She blamed Jaal. The way Ryder drove, Peebee was certain she'd never pay good credits for a roller coaster again. (Assuming someone built a roller coaster in Andromeda. Not really the first thing Peebee would invest in, if she were the investing type.) (Ryder would totally invest in a roller coaster, holy shit.)

Jaal, though, had a bad habit of pretending to fall asleep just to get a rise out of Peebee. That he was faking wasn't something Peebee could prove—yet—but in the end whether his graceless snoring, dead-to-the-world shtick was real or not didn't matter. It was contagious.

He was just so warm and soft and big, it was like having a space heater wrapped up in a big fuzzy blanket playing soothing whale noises next to you or something. And all the gravity-defying bumps and hairpin turns could settle into a soothing sort of rhythm if you _believed_ hard enough... So maybe Jaal wasn't faking _all_ the time...

Peebee woke with her forehead pressed against the back of the driver's seat. She groaned. The sudden rush back into consciousness coupled with that general in-the-Nomad feeling? Not a great combo.

"Doing okay back there, sleepyhead?" There was that smirk in her voice again. If someone gave Peebee a pen and paper in that moment, she could probably draw its exact shape, the exact angle at which Ryder's lips quirked.

She didn't lift her head. "I'm as fine as I can be in this death trap. Are we there yet?"

"SAM says we're still half an hour from the nav-point. Sorry." Ryder didn't sound very sorry at all.

Peebee groaned again, and dug her forehead just a little harder into the seat.

The next time it happened, Peebee awoke in a decidedly more comfortable position. Her head resting on Jaal's chest, his arm slung loosely around her. Yup, definitely a space heater wrapped in a fuzzy blanket. For once, the ride was going smoothly. No earth-shattering bumps, no cliff hopping.

"Looks like you're enjoying yourself back there," said Ryder.

"Eyes on the road, Pathfinder," she retorted.

"They are on the road. But you're really good at distracting me." Too soft. Not flirty, jokey enough. Then she laughed. "Maybe Jaal should drive next time."

"I like him back here," Peebee chirped, more than a little smug. She closed her eyes, letting Jaal's steady breathing settle something inside of her, letting herself have this for just a while—an actual friend's arm wrapped around her, Ryder's bright peals of laughter from the driver's seat.

* * *

Time passed, the way time always did, and Ryder got shit done, the way Ryder always did, and then all of a sudden they were back where they started, on Eos. The Tempest was docked in Prodromos, and would be for a whole night, some weird collaboration between Kallo and Gil to update the Tempest's systems and drive core without Kallo popping a blood vessel. The whole crew decided that instead of retiring to the docked ship for the night—and potentially watching Kallo and Gil strangle each other—it would be more fun to throw a small party in the outpost and spend the night there.

(By "the whole crew," it really meant that Liam had come up with the idea, talked Ryder and Jaal into it, and made Vetra load up the ship with the necessary supplies the last time they visited Kadara and the Nexus.)

The festival was a sweet, surprisingly low-key affair, but Peebee had a hard time enjoying it. Ever since Kalinda had broken into the ship and stolen Poc on Kadara, Peebee had hated seeing the Tempest docked for any length of time. It made her skin crawl, like anyone could just saunter in and poke through the life Peebee had stupidly, unwittingly started to build in there.

They'd gotten Poc back, Peebee had fixed her good as new, and she'd long deleted the taunting little voice message Kalinda had left for her. But it didn't matter. Peebee had an excellent memory, and she could still recite every word from the _"Hey, babe,"_ to the thinly veiled taunts about Ryder. Things got fucked, the way things always did.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid," Peebee muttered.

"Hey, the party's not that bad," said Vetra, seemingly materializing from around the corner.

Peebee was sitting on the ground with her back against one of the smaller shelters, precisely so no one could sneak up on her and force her to mingle or do something equally unsightly—she should have known Vetra Nyx would always find a way.

It was weird, she thought. She actually didn't hate it when Vetra plopped down on the ground next to her, drink in hand, like she didn't see or chose to ignore the big _'GO AWAY'_ sign Peebee had essentially hung around her neck, with her hunched posture and the datapad clutched in her hands.

Weird, the way these people could worm their way into your affections. Weird, how being a lone wolf could get _lonely_ after a decade or five. Weird, weird, and most of all unsettling. Peebee's eyes were wide open; she always did have a knack for knowing when she was about to get screwed. Maybe someday she would try harder to stop it from happening.

"You look more like jelly than you do Peanut Butter today," said Vetra. "You wanna talk about it?"

Peebee scoffed. Talk about it, right. "Do I ever? Do _you_ ever?"

Vetra shrugged, no trace of irony. "I'm learning." A crooked smile. "Ryder, Lexi, and Sid are triple-teaming me."

"Vetra Nyx unloading her burdens? Oh, I'll believe it when I see it."

"Ass," said Vetra, shoving her shoulder, still smiling. She really was— _lighter_ , ever since she started talking, really talking and sorting stuff out with her sister. It was sickeningly sweet—and made Peebee feel something light and fluttery in her own belly. Something like—sheer gladness for a friend's emotional well-being or something. Ugh.

Yeah, Peebee was smiling. A little. She couldn't help it.

"You're not the only one in a mood tonight," said Vetra, casual. "Our Pathfinder seems... distracted."

"She's always distracted. Maniac needs to slow down and relax for once."

"Pot, meet kettle."

"Never said I wasn't a hypocrite," she said brightly.

"Anyway," Vetra continued, "I don't know. She's been so out of it that I was wondering if you two had a fight."

"What? Us?" Peebee frowned. No, she and Ryder didn't fight. Neither of them stayed long enough for that. Besides, she'd barely seen Ryder ever since they rescued Poc and, well, Ryder always got a little quieter after visiting SAM node on the Hyperion... Oh.

 _Stupid_. She'd been so caught up in moping about Kalinda that she'd barely noticed how Ryder hadn't really been _Ryder_ for the past few days. No escape pod drop-ins, or stress relief, or even the sounds of her chuckling at Suvi and Kallo's antics on the bridge. Then again, wasn't looking after the moody Pathfinder supposed to be Lexi's job? Or Kosta's or Cora's, or something? Since when had the task fallen to Ryder's jerkass fuck-buddy?

But Ryder's jerkass fuck-buddy was also kind of Ryder's _friend_. Ugh. Peebee dropped her datapad in Vetra's lap and got to her feet.

She shot Vetra a look. "It's not my fault," Peebee announced, to no one in particular. "SAM, could you tell me where your other half is? Please?"

After some cajoling (and explaining of idioms), Peebee ended up on a low cliff overlooking the outpost. Eos was doing its Eos thing where it seemed the whole sky was glowing orange, meaning night was probably going to fall within the next hour. Heleus sunsets. Couldn't beat them.

"Hey, gorgeous," said Peebee. "Skipping out on the party?"

Ryder was sat near the edge, arms around her knees, as always looking so much younger without her armor. She didn't startle at Peebee's greeting—SAM had probably given her a heads up, reliable as ever—but she did toss her a small smile. No smirks today.

"Not enough alcohol," Ryder joked. "Therefore not my kind of shindig."

"Preaching to the choir." Peebee stretched out next to her, admiring the view. From a distance, Prodromos looked kind of almost nice. The lake helped. Still, too quiet for someone like her.

For her, for _them_. Peebee turned, and there was Ryder, already watching her in that intent, scary Ryder way. And then they were kissing, urgent, thoughtless in that _Peebee-and-Ryder_ way. Fingers tangled in Ryder's hair, then reaching for her scarf, her jacket, and Ryder, steady Ryder with her hard grip and harder lips. Probably nobody in the outpost would be able to see them, but anyone could make the short climb up, Vetra or Liam or kett raiders, even—

After, Ryder lay watching the stars and Peebee sat watching her, most of their clothes back on but their shirts still unbuttoned. She traced the plane of Ryder's stomach.

"So not fair," she said, "how you get to be all tech-y smart _and_ ridiculously toned. It's almost too attractive to be allowed."

There was that smirk. "That's me. Never much cared for rules." Ryder made a content humming noise. "That feels nice. Don't stop."

"Sure. I'll regurgitate my graduate thesis on quantum electrodynamics on your abs."

Ryder's eyes lit up at that, and it was stupidly cute. "Could you really?"

"Heck no, I barely remember it. I'm just..." _Tracing your name over and over in Asari._ Fuck—why would she do that? _Stop._

Quiet, which was unusual for them. Then: "Peebee? Earlier, why'd you come up to find me?"

"Maybe I didn't come for you. Maybe I was looking for some alone time on a rocky little cliff and you interrupted."

"Maybe you asked SAM for a nav-point like a creeper."

"Maybe Vetra said you seemed stressed so I came to offer my services, like a _saint_."

"Maybe so," Ryder relented.

Peebee withdrew her hand and while Ryder looked disappointed, she didn't stop her. She took a deep breath. "Asking as your friend, Ryder"— _please don't read into this, please don't_ —"are you okay?"

Ryder's eyelids fluttered, sleepy. "Are you?"

"Don't pull that on me," she said. It was hard to keep looking at Ryder without wanting to touch her, so Peebee tore her eyes away and drew swirly little patterns in the dirt instead. "I'm fine. You helped me get Poc back, so—peaches, right? But everyone else is always unloading their crap on you. Maybe you could shoot some back, you know? Doesn't have to be me or anything."

"So... You want me to share? Or, what, talk to Lexi?" Ryder laughed, but the sound was sharper than her usual warmth. "You running for Biggest Hypocrite of Heleus, Peebs?"

Peebee winced, still didn't look at her. "Maybe I just want you to cash in your mystery voucher. I don't like debt."

"Maybe I'm saving it for a special occasion."

"Maybe you—oh, _crap_ , let's not play this game again." Peebee huffed, and rolled over, and there she was, back how everything began: straddling Sara Ryder on the planet Eos. Her little, Pathfinder-shaped inevitability.

Ryder blinked up at her, pinned. "You're right. I like this game much better."

She brushed the curve of Ryder's mouth with her thumb, traced the little scar sliced across her upper lip. Didn't break eye contact as she said, "What happens in SAM node, every time I see you visiting the Hyperion?"

"I don't know. AI stuff." Her lips twitched against Peebee's fingers. "Turns out my dad's still good at fucking with my head even after he's dead." She let out a slow, uneven breath. "Kalinda—did you love her?"

Peebee froze, all of her, but then Ryder lifted her arm and touched her hand to the small of Peebee's back, soft and steady and sad, and it was like—

"Yeah," said Peebee, "I guess so. As much as someone like me... you know."

"Do you still?"

"No." Her hand curled around Ryder's cheek. "Crap. I don't know."

"Okay." Ryder's arm tightened around her waist. "You're okay."

"Are you?"

Ryder hummed. "I was thinking. When Scott and I said goodbye to Mom at the hospital, the day she—" She cut off, swallowed. Started again. "Well. The last thing she said to us was, 'Fall in love.' And you know, I think that's about the worst advice anyone has ever given me."

Peebee stared down at her for a long time, her Pathfinder, her Ryder. Finally she pressed a kiss to Ryder's forehead, and rolled off of her. "Agreed," she said, quiet. "No offense to your mother."

They lay flat on their backs, close but not touching. Eventually they fell asleep like that too, no cuddly sentiment, no pillow talk, no pillows, just hard ground and sex-rumpled clothing, but when Peebee woke early in the morning, she didn't run. She waited for Ryder's eyes to flutter open too, sunrise hugging her face, and they still didn't touch but it was—it was something.

Something stupid. Something new.

* * *

(Then there was—

A volcano. Lost tech but found closure. The hope that people could change—maybe not the dead, maybe not Kalinda, but people like Ryder, people like Peebee. People like Sara and Pelassaria.

And there would be cuddly sentiment, pillow talk, pillows. Morning breath kisses. Mood music. Strings. All the strings. Kind of, sort of, falling in love.

But for a while there was just—

Ryder's room, and Ryder's bed, and Ryder's warmth curled against Peebee's chest. Her rumpled hair, bleary eyes, dreamy smile.

A quip, "Why am I little spoon when I'm taller?"

"You might be taller but I'm one hundred years older."

"So, what, you're like a toddler in asari years?"

"Holy shit." She buried her face in the back of Ryder's neck. "I can't believe you just said that."

"Whatever. You like me."

"Yes." A flip, Ryder pinned beneath her. "I like you. Inevitably.")


End file.
